Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a remote health monitoring system, and, more specifically, to a system for automatic remote health monitoring, behavior monitoring, and therapy tracking.
There are many remote health monitoring systems on the market for monitoring the health condition, the behavior, or medication of patients that can be used in health care institutional or home environment.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,624,028, a remote health monitoring and maintenance system and method that enable a health care provider to monitor and manage health conditions of a patient are described. The system includes a health care provider apparatus operated by a health care provider and a remotely programmable patient apparatus that is operated by a patient. The health care provider develops a script program using the health care provider apparatus and then sends the script program to a remotely programmable patient apparatus through a communication network such as the World Wide Web. The script program is a computer-executable patient protocol that provides information to the patient about the patient's health condition and that interactively monitors the patient health condition by asking the patient questions and by receiving answers to those questions. The answers to these health related questions are then forwarded as patient data from the remotely programmable patient apparatus to the health care provider apparatus through the communication network. The patient data may also include information supplied by a physiological monitoring device such as a blood glucose monitor that is connected to the remotely programmable patient apparatus. When the patient data arrives at the health care provider apparatus, the patient data is processed for further management of the patient's health condition by the health care provider, such as forwarding another script program to the remotely programmable patient apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,624,028 also describes a system, where healthcare providers are enabled to monitor health conditions of the patient. These conditions are collected by physiological monitoring devices connected to the patient side device, or by the patient side device itself, in form of surveys. Healthcare providers are also enabled to change the details, parameters, and the flow of inspection or therapy. The changes in monitoring and therapy details are automatically delegated to the patient device through the communication network. This prior art system allows some flexibility with respect to collecting patient related information but the initial setup and customization of compound patient monitoring and therapy tracking profiles and also every change regarding these profiles require an extensive programming/configuration step carried out by a health care provider or administrator. This programming/configuration requires special skills and may be rather time consuming, as well.
In U.S. Patent application no. 2005/0222873 A1, systems, methods and user interfaces for configuration of medical patient monitoring and configuration systems are disclosed. At a central database in which patient information, health care provider information and health care group information may be stored, patient information is associated with health care provider information, which is associated with health care group information. When stored information is accessed, patient information is displayed with its associated health care provider information, and health care provider information is displayed with its associated health care group information. Systems, methods, and user interfaces for customizing per-patient and standardized user prompts are also disclosed.
U.S. Patent application no. 2005/0222873 A1 discloses a system with elaborate user interface functionality, in which much valuable information is displayed when patient records are accessed. However the high amount of displayed low-level information regarding questionnaires, reminders, medications, health conditions, vital sign measurements, monitoring events can be confusing and can make difficulties in quick and accurate overview of the running therapy process and the current state of the patient.
As shown in the next paragraphs below, composition, configuration, and parameterization of more compound home monitoring and therapy profiles can be quite complicated in the prior art systems. The low-level composition of monitoring procedures and low-level setup of high amount of possible monitoring and therapy parameters presented above is an expert-demanding, time-consuming task.
The term patient will be used for an individual to be monitored, who is at a distant location from the medical assistance. Patients may live in his/her own house or flat or may be resident of an assisted living facility.
The term monitoring profile will be used as a set of monitoring and therapy processes running at the patient site, which is composed of predefined monitoring elements (templates) and which can be fully configured, customized and parameterized. A monitoring profile may be very complicated, as it may contain numerous elements of types of measurement specifications, monitoring procedures, signal processors, medical rules, surveys, and patient tasks.
A measurement specification describes a physiological measurement in all details. It includes the scheduling of the measurement, the used measurement device, the measurement instructions to display on the patient side device (also referred to as ‘homehub’), and possibly surveys, which must be taken during, before, or after measurement.
A monitoring procedure describes the measurement procedure of a behavioral attribute in all details. It includes the applicable measurement devices, scheduling, and an algorithm, which calculates the behavioral attribute based on sensor data.
Signal processors are computing program modules, which are capable of processing physiological or behavioral data and generating higher order, derived data.
Medical rules are expert rules of human medical professionals, which are applied in an expert system, as a knowledge base of human expertise for problem solving, or clarify uncertainties.
Surveys are written set of questions, which can be displayed to the patient on the homehub in order to collect qualitative or quantitative information.
Patient tasks are tasks, which are displayed by the homehub and must be carried out by the patient with the purpose of testing a patient skill (e.g. cognitive test) or providing therapy (e.g. exercising).
When a new patient enters the health-monitoring provider, a new applicable monitoring profile must be set up. When the state of a patient changes, or a therapy must be changed, the applied monitoring profile must be reviewed and corrected. The task of monitoring profile management includes the composition, tracking of the monitoring elements and also their parameterization, like scheduling details (e.g. period of scheduling, day, hour, minute of run, number of repeats, day offs), limit values (e.g. limits of physiological values, behavioral attributes), delay, timeout values (in monitoring procedures many timeout values are used, for instance: maximal allowed minutes spent in bathroom before generating an alert), signal processor parameters (e.g. acceleration offset used in fall detection signal processor, or detailed settings of an ECG signal processor, like time delay of beginning of average computing after the base point), questions, and flow of survey (in case of surveys the flow (what to ask next after getting a certain answer) and questions itself can be defined), contact information (signal processors, surveys, medical rules are capable of generating monitoring events, monitoring alerts, which must be transferred to healthcare professionals or caregivers, where the contact information describes the recipient details of those alerts.)
The setting up of a monitoring profile means composing it from numerous monitoring elements of the types listed above and parameterizing these elements with the possible parameters listed above, as well. In case of multiple monitoring elements the setup may be very complicated.
On the other hand review of a running monitoring profile may be complicated, too. If the expert only sees the low-level monitoring elements, it is hard to put together all of them in mind in order to have a high-level overview.
Finally viewing, analyzing, and inspecting of low-level measurement data can be very complicated, also. For instance, the human overview of the low-level outputs of motion sensors, containing timestamps (e.g. time of motion event) and zone identifiers (e.g. place of motion) is hardly possible, regarding the high amount of motion data generated every day.